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Category: D&D

We’ve come a long way. The World is built, its natural laws surrounding magic have been established, its been populated with animals and plants, and we have a general knowledge of the cultures that we have options for along with the general history. Now, its time to dive deep into the lives of the individuals.

I talked about History, recently, and how it forms the game around itself, creating a realistic world and forming into a greater whole. This time, I want to look at a bit more of the specifics of large, ancient empires and how they form the nucleus of a good history.

We’ve made our way, creating a brand new world, through Geography, flora, fauna, Magical traits, and basic knowledge of civilization both traditional and non-traditional. Each of these steps has been to build the knowledge with which to create a solid framework and foundations. Now, we start getting into the world of the people, and how it is both perceived and lived. First up, a working history.

While I’ve spent the last few weeks talking about the types and styles of civilizations, from City States to Feudal Nations, and the populations that live in them, this week will bring a close, both figuratively and literally to the chapter on nations. I’m going to talk a little bit about how nations defined themselves and their boundaries and their lands.

The last few articles have revolved around how traditional civilizations exist. I do want to hit on a-typical civilization, like tribalism, nomadism, and other types of pre-modern societies pop up, but I think that is for a later time. Today, I want to talk about Demographics and Populations – less of how the people work, and more of who the people are.

I talked a little bit, in Nations, about how our concept of nations and what normally exists, is a little bit flawed. I then went into city states, because they are a simpler system, but now I want to talk a bit about Kingdoms, and therefore, Feudal Societies.

Last week, I talked about the strange anachronisms that we as players and writers bring to our worlds regarding nations, and what nations are conceived to be. Today I want to take a look at a much more common form of Polity, the City-State.

In direct contrast to last weeks focus, this week I want to talk a bit about the concept, formation, and anachronisms surrounding some of the nations in our RPG campaigns and other worlds. This is a fascinating topic because there is so much that is hard to understand from our point in time.

One of the greatest realizations about running a game came to me while reading my least favorite game to adjucate, D&D 4e. While the game had many flaws, its basic setting being focused on Points of Light lead me to the realization of what I had been doing wrong this whole time. Continue reading